138APPENDIX E: AUTOMATIC ATTRIBUTE ASSIGNMENT

By editing the user-defined attributes configuration file, you select which programs are used to determine attributes for objects. You can use the standard programs supplied, or you can create your own custom programs.

There are two standard programs and one example program provided:

fileattrs — Assigns attributes to devices automatically, based upon a configuration file containing comma-separated data which you must provide. For example, use this file to assign a MAC address to a specific network layer address. See “Using the fileattrs Program” on page 140.

dblookup — Assigns attributes to devices automatically, based upon the contents of a Microsoft Access database or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. See “Using the dblookup Program” on page 142.

nbtlookup.exe — An example program which uses NetBios Status messages to find out the names of users who are currently logged on to the Windows system. The first argument is the name of the subnet to which the request should be restricted (for example, home-subnet). It creates two attributes: OS Type and User. OS Type is set to Windows if the device responds to the NetBios message and User is set to the NetBios user name, if there is one. You could set up a grouping using the NL Type, OS Type and User attributes (in that order) to see the traffic generated by a particular PC user. The code for this example can be found in <install dir>/examples/c/nbtlookup.

Contents of the

User-defined

Attributes

Configuration File

This file can be viewed or edited by double clicking on Attribute Lookup in the Traffix Control Panel.

Each line of the file represents an attribute lookup program which is run when Traffix Manager is trying to discover attributes for a particular object. This happens when a new device is discovered, or when you use the Reload Attributes dialog box.

When Traffix Manager discovers attributes for a particular object, it runs each of the programs in the user-defined attributes configuration file in turn. By adding your own programs to this file or by removing existing entries from the file you can control how attributes for devices are determined.

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HP Transcend Traffix Manager manual Contents User-defined Attributes Configuration File